The Boldness of the Tobacco Control Industry Scoundrels

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the panic in tobacco control. I suppose panic and boldness can go hand in hand.

Sometimes we use the word ‘bold’ in an approving sense. Thus, we might say that a soldier acted ‘boldly’ by dashing forward and attacking the enemy. At other times we use the word in a disapproving sense, such as when a salesman tries to press us into buying something. That is the sense in which I use the word in this case – almost literally; In their panic, the scoundrels in TC are taking greater and greater risks. The attacks on e-cigs are a case in point.

I’ve been reading about the bare-faced (‘bald-faced’ if you are American) distortion of official figures in the USA about youth smoking. I can’t go into details because I don’t know enough, but you can read about it here:

It seems that he and his mates have been double counting. I’m not sure, because it is not spelt out, but it seems that some students, who said in a survey that they smoke and also use e-cigs, have been counted as both smokers and dual users (of cigs and e-cigs), thus giving a total figure which is inflated. For example, suppose that I gave you these figures:

Smokers………..100.

Dual users……….20.

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Total……………120.

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You would assume that the total is indeed 120 persons. But, no, Grantz included the dual user cig smokers twice. He included them as smokers and also as dual users. The real figure should be 100, because the dual users were already included as smokers. The figures should have read: Smokers: 80. Dual users: 20. Total 100.

Normally, it would not matter very much if you are simply comparing one year with another without drawing other than obvious conclusions. For example, you could have this situation the following year:

Smokers……..200.

Dual users…….40.

———————

Total…………240.

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In that case, the double counting would not matter much. You could claim that youth ‘smoking’ has doubled.

The problem arises when the figures are used to try to prove a different hypothesis. In this case, it is the attempt to prove that e-cig use has led to an increase in cig use among youths. For example, in the above figures, suppose that the second group read:

Smokers……200.

Dual users…..60.

——————–

Total………..260.

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In that case, it would be possible to claim that the dual users has increased, pro rata, MORE than would be expected. You could claim that, because dual users has increased, proportionately, MORE THAN dual users were before, then the dual use MUST include youths who started to use cigs AFTER using e-cigs.

Tricky stuff, isn’t it?

BUT….. By double counting, the authors have obscured the fact that the most of the dual users were already using cigs!

What that means, when corrections are made for the double counting, is that the actual number of youths who have tried an e-cig before starting to smoke cigs becomes minuscule, and far too low to draw a conclusion that the use of e-cigs leads to tobacco smoking.

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The trouble is that people like Grantz have gained control over the media. I don’y know how they have done it, but they have. Perhaps it is simply the issuing of scary press releases. Perhaps scary press releases are ‘NEWS’. But it is hard not to believe that some newspaper proprietors are hand-in-glove with the prohibitionists.

What is it about people like Bloomberg and Gates that they feel that they can financially support persecution? Why do they not simply spend their billions of dollars on providing clean water and sewers in Africa? Frankly, I think that they are caught on the horns of a dilemma – in order to improve the living conditions of millions of people in Africa, the Bs and Gs would have to encourage more burning of ‘fossil fuels’ in Africa. They cannot do that, and so they demand a reduction of the burning of ‘fossil fuels’ in the Healthy, Wealthy West.

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I must close for tonight. The most ridiculous thing is that the Earth is, itself, a source of unimaginable energy. Beneath our feet is am almost inexhaustible supply of heat. Such heat can boil water (without destroying it) and drive electrical turbines.

But the key discovery that mankind needs is a way to store electrical energy, in vast quantities, in a tiny volume. I am talking about a battery of AAA size which can power a bus for a hundred years, or provide enough power to drive the propellers of an aircraft or a ship for decades. You see, we do not necessarily need jet engines. In the atmosphere, we can use propellers. Going to the planets, or even just the Moon, will require some source of energy of even greater potential, but that discovery is way beyond us, at this time.

Mankind needs to know what SPACE is. It exists, and therefore it is a THING’. It cannot be NOTHING. If it was NOTHING, it would not exist. But it exists, and therefore cannot be NOTHING. If it exists, and is not nothing, then it must have qualities and quantities. Einstein investigated and discovered the ‘bendability’ of space – sort of. Little effort has been made since about the properties of Space. `

13 Responses to “The Boldness of the Tobacco Control Industry Scoundrels”

Just for the record, we Americans say “bald-faced” (not “bold-faced”), with the origin referring to uncovered for all the world to see. Strictly speaking, “we Americans” = those of us who try to use our established idioms correctly. That might be a minority.

As for the analysis, something is sitting wrong with me about it, but no time to think it through right now. I will point Rodu to it to see if he has a comment.

‘Bald-faced’ – of course. Getting confused between my ‘balds’ and my ‘bolds’.
I couldn’t figure out what had been done to the figures with any precision. My simple calculations were just a ‘best guess’ at what might have happened.

I have a birthday card stuck in the window frame above me which one of my daughters sent me a few years ago. It has a basic line drawing of the top half of a bald head, and underneath is written:

“Let us ABANDON the head of this man and leave him with a shining Dome of Glory.
For people will RESPECT his newly WISE appearance as we migrate to other regions of his STRANGE and NAKED form.”

Make of that what you will.

I think it was a reference to the fact that when they were young my daughters occasionally remarked on the odd fact that as my hair decreased on my head, I became more bodily hirsute.

Or something.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your Easter weekend. It doesn’t actually mean much to me, apart from the fact that the shops are closed. I’m not religious, and I tend to work every day when I have work to do (which is most of the time). So today was pretty much like any other day, except I’ve nearly run out of milk, and all we have is my wife’s semi-skimmed crap. Egad!

Some people are natural born gobsh*tes who initially get what they want.
I don’t think that it is as simple as that, Beo. I think that the media was sewn up many years ago. Julia Middleton (wife of a big Mirror Group Executive) set up some sort of ‘media ethics panel’ some years ago to push the TC agenda in the media. I believe that it is all linked to the FCTC diaspora.
As for Bloomberg and Gates, I think that they are racked with guilt about they way that they made their fortunes. That is why B now claims “that he has earned his place in heaven and that he’ll just walk in without stopping“. He feels good because he does not understand that people enjoy tobacco. He thinks that tobacco companies are devils. He forgets that the way in which he made his fortune paints him as a devil himself.

The first of these overcounts and the second undercounts compared to what the data shows. Both are used to be alarmist about ecigs. It illustrates the fact that those people will lie in either direction, depending on what suits their claim of the day.

I will leave the discussion of billionaires’ messiah complexes for others, other than to say that given the choice between the two of them that spend on “public health” and the dozens who spend to control the government and media in order to keep non-rich people from having opportunities in life, I prefer the nannies.

But the Sun is right to castigate the EU for meddling. The EU is, once again, fixing a thing which is not broken.

No, the EU is trying to fix what isn’t broken.

The coffee makers turning off the hot plate after 5 minutes are a waste of space; get an old fashioned filter and a thermos can…. Works a treat!

The EU “project”raises a few questions: even though we admire the European Union as an ideal. The problem is how to have a ‘union’ and yet retain our national independence.

In my view it would be sufficient to have an EU which centers on trade rather than on destroying participating countries’ individual cultures.
The EU as it stands is a failure – the lobby infested Brussel dictates every nonsense that is lobbied.

Perhaps it is not for the worst that coffee is now being attacked – all Starbucks getting bad press even though Starbucks banned smokers…..